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Kōwhai News Term 3 Week 9

Posted on 23 September, 202223 September, 2022 by Charlotte Verity

It has been another busy fortnight at our kura! We hope you enjoy reading about our adventures and learning. Have a safe and happy holiday time and thank you for your ongoing support.

Handwriting

All Kōwhai teachers have undertaken in-depth training on the Kinetic Letters handwriting programme, and we're now implementing this daily with our students. These sessions include:

core and upper body strength exercises
finger dexterity exercises and pencil grip practise
letter formation, using the letter family groups

Safe Play

Playing outside games safely and kindly has been an area of learning for many ākonga of late. This includes choosing kind thoughts, kind actions and kind words. This has been the case with football, cricket and Four Square games. We are noticing and celebrating all the kindness we see...that is a key part of our school value, We Get There Together!

Enjoy watching and discussing this video at home.

Athletics

We have LOVED our athletics practises which started this week! Groups will participate in training sessions for sprint/running, shot put, high jump, discus and long jump. Warming up and down with stretches are also important elements of our learning. Athletics will take place on 26 October 2022, weather conducive. We will advise further details as they come to hand. Please ensure your child has good running shoes at school every day. Thanks a million :-)

Hats

Hats will be back on our heads to protect us from the sun from the start of Term 4. Please hunt your child's hat out ready to go in their school bag. Sunscreen is also recommended and can be applied before school.

Assembly

Congratulations to our Kete certificate recipients and thanks to Harriet for her informative cultural presentation on France and our awesome presenters, Lily and Paige.

Swimming

In weeks 3 and 4 next term, we will participate in water safety sessions at Pioneer Pool. We will be in touch early next term with further information and to seek parent helpers (thanks in advance to those who can assist!).

Discovery Photos

Some of our Discovery sessions have had a values focus, in line with a Student Council promotion of the school values. We have been noticing our ākonga demonstrating each value, and commenting or praising them accordingly. Recently, we had a We Love Challenge task which involved designing a boat, and options included:

Make a boat to hold the most weight and still float
Build a boat that will move by itself
Create a boat entirely from natural material

The students learnt so much, working together or independently, developing and testing out their ideas, making adjustments, solving problems and being creative in their design approach.

Kōwhai News Term 2 Week 7

Posted on 17 June, 202217 June, 2022 by Charlotte Verity

It has been another action-packed week in team Kōwhai, as detailed below!

Reminders:

Matariki whānau evening next Wednesday, 22nd June at school - please come and enjoy crafts and other Matariki learning from 5-6pm. There will be a short performance by the Kōwhai Kapa Haka Group at around 6:20pm, followed by an optional Hangi. Hangi food can be ordered from the PTA. If your child is in the Kōwhai Kapa Haka group and they are coming to perform, could you please make sure they are in Pūkaki by 6pm in order to get ready for the performance.
Learning Conferences - to be held in the last week of term, on Monday 4th and Wednesday 6th June. Please note school finishes at 2pm both days. If you haven't already, please book online.

Cross Country

Thank you to all those parents and whānau who attended and supported our Cross Country event on Tuesday. We were delighted to have families back enjoying a beautiful sunny afternoon. Congratulations to all participants. We were so proud of the way you embraced the challenge of completing the course!

The top 6 placed children for each year (top 6 boys and top 6 girls) will be invited to run in the Cross Country Challenge at Hillview on Tuesday 5th July. There will be more information on this to follow.

Structured Literacy in the Kōwhai Hub

Structured Literacy happens from 11-12.40 in our hub, and includes the following:

Oral Language

Oral language features throughout the sessions, with lots of shared discussion, peer discussion, teacher-led groups, games and play reading on occasion.

Reading

Phonics warm-up (using the Heggerty Phonics Programme)
Speed sounds: flash card reading and/or writing of key spelling patterns and sounds
Small group reading with the teacher (using the Little Learners Love Literacy range), which includes dictated words and sentences to practise spelling patterns
Follow-up tasks focused on specific spelling patterns: games, worksheets, sentence work
Dragon word spelling
Heart word spelling
'Must do' and 'can do' tasks, such as reading, free writing, wordfinds, targeted work sheets, word challenges, cartoon drawing, Chromebook or iPad literacy games and more

Writing

We focus on different genres or text types for a few weeks at a time. We have just completed a focus on descriptive writing, and were blown away by the student's progress with using adjectives, verbs, similes, metaphors! We are now moving into narrative writing, and some groups are starting this with fractured fairy tales (or fairy tales which are mixed up or slightly twisted from the original!). Each writing session includes some or all of:

Teacher modelling or shared writing (teacher and students working together to write a text)
Reading good examples of a genre or text
Planning writing using varied templates or strategies (e.g. a mindmap, picture drawing etc)
Independent writing and editing time
Teacher conferencing and feedback to students
Small groups working with the teacher on specific elements of writing
Publishing
ICT research
Handwriting
Spelling or grammar tasks

Kete Awards: Week 6 (last week)

Discovery Fun!

Kōwhai News Term 1 Week 11

Posted on 14 April, 202214 April, 2022 by Charlotte Verity

Kia ora tātou,

It has been another busy fortnight, and our students have continued to amaze us with their passion and energy for learning. Well done to all our tamariki! Thanks again to all whānau for your ongoing support. We wish you a relaxing, healthy and fun holiday period.

Park Detectives

The Christchurch City Council Outdoor Education Team visited us over the past fortnight, and helped us learn more about birds, bugs and trees down at our local ponds. The children completed a 'what I already know' and 'what I'd like to learn more about' brainstorm before we completed the sessions. We had lots of fun talking about birds, bugs and trees. Here are some of the key terms we learnt. Why not ask your child about them at home and see what they recall?

Decomposition
Seed Dispersal
Pollination
Photosynthesis

We hope to undertake more inquiry learning about our environment over the next term. A big thanks to our parent helpers too!

Discovery Time: Gardening Group

We have been observing and discussing how different plants grow, using their roots and petals and leaves to get nutrition from soil and sunlight. We have looked at bulbs, seeds and root systems and had fun planting beans and daffodil bulbs.

Discovery: Learning social skills through sport

We have an eager group of cricket players this term. The group love sharing their ideas about the rules, and making sure play is fair. They take turns and talk through decisions on scoring. They love to encourage each other.

More Discovery Fun...

Wellbeing: Special Spaces

This week, we've talked about special places that help our wellbeing. We identified places at school and outside of school, and shared how we feel in these places. Our feelings included calm, happy, safe, joy-filled and loved.

Kahikatea Newsletter Week 3 Term 4

Posted on 5 November, 20215 November, 2021 by Charlotte Verity

Kia Ora Whānau,

What a busy start to the term it has been! We are loving seeing all the tamariki with their hats, drink bottles and bright smiles each day. Thank-you for all you are doing to support them and us, especially with the level 2 working conditions. A gentle reminder too, that if your child is sniffing, sneezing or coughing please keep them at home. It doesn't take long for even a little bug to spread.

Student Language Therapy Student Teachers

We are very fortunate to have two student language teachers in our kura this term. They are working with tamariki in team Kahikatea and Koru. Lisa is overseeing their work with small groups of students and one to one to help build speech, language and literacy skills.

My name is Leianne. I’m one of the speech-language therapist student working with the children in the school. I’m in my final block placement block after 4 years of studying. I feel very privileged to be working amongst the most dependable and passionate staff. I look forward to supporting the students through fun and interactive activities to advance them in their speech, language and social abilities.

My name is Gurleen Kaur and I'm a Speech Therapy student at the University of Canterbury. I'm currently working alongside the amazing staff of Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto and the lovely children as a part of my speech therapy work. This has been a great opportunity. I'm looking forward to learning from all the staff and giving back in all ways as I can.

Gurleen

Athletics

We are working hard with our Athletics practises! We are enjoying hurdles, relays, long jump and shot put. Please make sure you send your child's named hat, water bottle and running shoes every day. We will have our final athletics on Thursday if weather allows. We cannot invite whānau due to level 2 restrictions, but will do our best to take lots of lovely photos to share.

Calendar Art

Calendar art order forms went home last week. Please return your order to the office. Thanks for supporting our PTA in this initiative.

Congratulations to our Kete Award Recipients!

Wellbeing this Week

We have been learning about and showing Respect, which is demonstrate through all our school values especially 'We Make a Difference'. We have talked about what respect looks like when we are speaking and treating others. We respect ourselves, others, our teachers and things. Watch this video and discuss with your tamariki.

How can we show respect?

For our value 'We Make a Difference' we have been making an extra effort to notice and pick up the rubbish we see. We have made a special effort to do a rubbish sweep of the junior playground each day, and also look after our cubby area.